QuoteReplyTopic: People Who Cheat The System Posted: 03/October/2011 at 12:43pm

Student Debt & People Who Cheat the System

Student debt, like any other financial problem presents a lot of stress in the lives of students. In my experience the majority of people who approach The CFW Group Inc. for help are honest people with real life crises that want to do the responsible thing and repay their student loans. In many cases borrowers just can’t repay because of the Canada Student Loan system’s financial demands concerning repayment, and the borrower’s lack of financial capacity to maintain the debt.

Social and emotional pressures caused by debt precipitate behavior that may appear abnormal and frustrating to the system.People might express anger and regret for participating in studies, and feel hopeless because of enormous debt. Or, a borrower who is being sued by the government or a collection agency will suggest that they will quit their job and go on social assistance in the event an execution order is issued to their employer to engage a wage attachment. Fear is fear and that is what people react to in situations of a threat to their financial and social well being. This doesn't mean an individual is frustrating the system just because he or she feels held captive by it.

What about the segment of student loan borrowers who do cheat the system and refuse to pay student loans that they took out while benefitting from the education they received? The reality is that these people do exist. There are some who feel as if they are entitled to receive things for free in life without having to pay for it. I encounter people that don’t want to pay for service that I provide many times during the work day. People will call our office randomly and expect me to help them without having to pay for it, regardless of how much time it may take to provide that assistance.

The CFW Group Inc. does not provide service to people who intend on cheating the system concerning the repayment of student loans – or any financial responsibility. When we are faced with a client who is intent on cheating the system and expects The CFW Group to assist him or her in doing that, we terminate that client’s services immediately and move on. The CFW Group has had to terminate services for a number of people in the past, and a few of those who have been evicted from our protective services have gone online and created horrible blogs containing a lot of untrue and defamatory material towards me and The CFW Group Inc as a company simply because I would not aid and abet in efforts to frustrate the system.

One such blog was created by a man based out of Toronto who used and abused the services of The CFW Group Inc for a number of years until things caught up with him to the point that he got into trouble with a bank who he owed a student loan to.

The blogger’s alias is “Disappointed” and below is my response to his outrageous accusations and defamatory commentary written in a blog about me personally and The CFW Group.

CFWG's Response to the blogger naming himself “Disappointed”:

In 2006 The CFW Group received a call from you asking for help reducing your bank risk student loan. An assessment of your situation was done based on the information you provided and a service agreement was written up, you paid the fee, and work was begun to help you out.

The situation and business relationship with you became quite unsettling within the first few months. Your behavior was questionable and you would call me randomly all the time without appointments and complain about how long things take.

You were advised (like everyone in debt reduction casework) that, in order to get the best results, it does take a significant amount of time especially in cases like yours whereas the hardship had to be substantiated in order to demonstrate to the bank that you were truly unable to pay the full amount of your student loan.

Within a few months of signing on it became apparent why you were so pushy and demanding that things be done on your watch rather than the normal process time. You contacted me with a request to help you secure a mortgage. You were immediately advised that this type of work was not described or agreed upon in the scope or service provided to you. Once you were told this you became even pushier and insisted that all debt reduction work be ceased, and replaced with this new task of trying to secure this new mortgage.

I advised you that by doing this it would prejudice the demonstration of hardship that is required in order to secure debt reduction. The result would be that the debt reduction work would have to be postponed for a significant amount of time simply because of the prejudice it brought, and it would be unlikely that the bank would agree to reduce debt for someone who is not experiencing hardship. You were clearly not upfront and honest about your situation from the very beginning. People in hardship and are unable to pay aren’t in the process of negotiating mortgages and credit privileges.

.

After being advised of the consequences you demanded that I sign a letter that you wrote “for me” to send to the bank in charge or your mortgage application outlining the issue with your student loan. I communicated with you and advised you that I was not comfortable sending the bank a letter with that material you were trying to pitch. Instead, I drafted an account of the situation as it was.

Shortly afterwards you were approved for your mortgage and you received the full benefit of that. However, there still remained the task of working with the bank to achieve debt reduction based on your proclaimed hardship issues. The problem was that the bank you owed would clearly see that you had been applying for credit privileges when doing their research of your credit history, which banks do as an effort to substantiate what is being pitched to them by people looking for reductions of debt.

I had advised you of the prejudice again that your credit seeking and mortgage acquisition brought to this project but you wouldn’t listen. You insisted that I continue to press forward regardless of the prejudicial consequences your previous actions brought, and how difficult it would to argue your case for hardship. I advised you that it would take a significant amount of time, and that you should make a payment arrangement to show good faith because you were clearly able to do that. You decided not to, of course.

That was a trend in our business relationship. You dictated what the service was to be despite the agreement and scope of work that was assigned. What I should have done was kick you out once you started applying pressure on The CFW Group to perform services that were not part of the agreement.

After working through this for the following couple of years, you became more and more demanding, often trying to intimidate me the staff here with threats of going online and writing negative material over the internet. This threatening behavior was repeated during the course of the intervention. Again, instead of terminating the service agreement and kicking you out because of your abusive and irresponsible behavior I decided to see it through, as a professional.

During this time you contacted the bank you owed and spoke with representatives, which delayed results even more and risked prejudicing your case even further despite being advised that you weren’t to communicate with them concerning the matter. Because of your ignorance and unwillingness to abide by the rules you were doing more damage than good, and causing more and more work for me in the process. Advice given to you was never followed or adhered to. You were a rogue client, simply put.

Finally, after years of intense work, on April 10, 2009 I was able clean up your mess and secure a settlement for you in the amount of $10,000.00. The bank agreed to accept your $10,000.00 offer, which you also agreed to in our discussions. Your debt was reduced to $10,000.00 from $24,000.00.

The results were brought to you and you then responded with an email to me. Below is a transcript of that email. In that email, you wrote:

“I recently got a credit card (finally) after several attempts at trying, so I no longer have that problem. Plus, we have everything squared away in terms of mortgage, financing, etc. I used to be anxious to get this settled so it was off my credit report so I could get a credit card, financing, etc…. but now I have all that me and my family require….

In your opinion now, what is the worst that could happen should we let (bank) sit on it for another 3 yrs?”

Rather than respond to you by email, I called you to discuss my frustrations with you, and advise you that the work I agreed to do – plus all the other free work over the course of MANY years (which is not mentioned here); and tell you that you either pay the bank or you walk away from it, and that The CFW Group has fulfilled the agreement and our business together is done. I go your voice mail at your office, so I left a very polite message of what is described above.

The email as shown above clearly illustrates that you got what you wanted and had no intention of paying your debt, or honoring the service I provided, of which was executed as promised with a very good result.

I have to ask you this. If you were so concerned about accruing interest why would you even suggest going into hiding for 3 years? Why didn’t you just cancel and deal with the matter on your own?

In January 2010, nearly 11 months after I secured the debt reduction of your student loan, the misery starts all over again. After receiving the above email from you I receive a text message from you saying you were being pursued by a collection agency for the bank risk student loan and they wanted the full amount or they would sue you.

You never responded to my message in 2009, never called the bank to arrange payment of the $10,000.00 debt reduction I worked tirelessly to secure for you - nothing. You just ignored it and thought it would go away. You were wrong.

I responded to your text about the collection agency pursuing you and advised you that there was nothing I was prepared to do for you because you decided to walk away from the settlement 11 months prior without paying. You then started sending me text messages and emails with threats that you would go online and create a blog to attack The CFW Group’s reputation and my character. You also threatened me if I did not refund you half of the fee you paid.

In your blog you claim that you had to negotiate your own settlement. In the end, you had to deal with the bank and the collection agency they hired because I was not prepared to provide you with any further service, especially free service. What you did was box yourself into a corner by frustrating the system.

If you wanted me to go back to the bank and see if I could reinstate the $10,000.00 offer I secured for you that you walked away from 11 months prior you were told you had to pay for that work. The previous scope of service had been fulfilled (not to mention all the free work done for you outside the scope of work). The result was that you ended up paying the bank (through the collection agency) $14,000.00 and not $16,000.00 that you cited in your blog.

In your blog you wrote:

“Not many people know this, but you can actually reach a good settlement by negotiating yourself!”

Since you wound up shelling out $14,000.00 instead of doing the right thing by honoring the $10,000.00 I secured for you as I agreed to do for you it is clear that you didn’t get a good result by doing anything yourself at all.

It is my understanding that you contacted the agency after I declined to provide you with any further assistance without payment and attempted to conjure a $7000.00 offer and they declined. They already knew you had $10,000.00 because the offer I secured for you 11 months prior was on record, so why would they settle for less?

In your blog you wrote:

“During the 5 or so years, he even changed his email address and phone #'s a couple of times”

You had all the correct contact information for me and my offices. You communicated with me right up until you decided to totally frustrate the system and walk away 11 months prior. Email changes were given to you and you were communicating with me via that email address and all contact numbers right up until the bank forced you out of your gopher hole that you went into hiding in for wasting their time (and mine as well).

In your blog you wrote:

“John Leblanc wasted many years of mine and it cost me. My debt was at $17,000 when i first hired him. If i had settled it then, i probably could have settled with the collectors for around or under $10,000. who knows! But John wasted time and was unavailable which allowed the interest to accrue”

First of all, you ended up paying $4000.00 more than you would have had to pay if you wouldn’t have gone ahead and attempted cheating the system, as you so demonstrated in April 2009 when you went into hiding after I secured you your debt reduction.

Secondly, your debt was not $17,000.00 in the beginning. When you approached me it was over $20,000.00. The debt was in default and they were looking for you long before you approached me.

Lastly, interest continued to accrue during the near-11 month hide and seek game you played with the bank after I secured this settlement for you in April 2009. You are using interest as an argument in the same way debt collectors use it to entice people to pay debt. Your ability to negotiate on your own behalf failed miserably and that is evident in the result.

To sum it up, it is clear that your intentions were to cheat the system. Everyone in my environment who has seen your case feels the same way. In a conversation with you in March 2009 you admitted that you could pay the full amount if you really had to. This was news to me, since you were citing hardship since the beginning, which of course was completely untrue. You were always full of odd surprises.

The CFW Group Inc has several telephone conversations with you recorded because of how much of a nightmare you were to deal with. A report about you was filed with the RCMP detachment in Tantalon, Nova Scotia because of your behavior and actions in January 2010. To call you a loose cannon would be an insult to loose cannons.

From the very beginning you sold yourself as someone who needed the help very badly and you were quite dishonest in your intentions. I delivered the result you were looking for, you obtained your mortgage and all sorts of credit ventures, and the last thing on your priority list was dealing with the student loan from the very beginning.

You used The CFW Group to fulfill your personal goals, of which were achieved, and also to elude the bank student loan. When it came time for you to see if you could use The CFW Group to help you frustrate the system concerning your student loan issue I pulled the plug and gave you the boot.

Solve Student Debt specializes in solutions for students and graduates in student loan default, and those at risk of defaulting.

I can speak first hand about the services provided and type of person John is. He has helped me on a couple of occassions in dealing with my student loan debts. I was upfront and honest with John from the start, and in turn John was able to provide me with a great service that in the end saved me thousands of dollars. If anyone has any question about me situation and how John and the CFW Group was able to help me, please feel free to email me and I will be sure to respond!!

Sorry but due to the fact that collection agencies tend to harvest emails and then harrass people, email addresses are blocked on the site.... not that I want to, but from experience its a best practice for a site like this...

Thanks John for adding this post and dealing with the bullies you have to put up with.

Mike, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the people on that silly blog are people I gave the boot for cheating the system and abuising my services and even my staff. There is a worse case than this one out there, which I am going to bring out shortly. There are people posting garbage who were pro bono clients that I agreed to help for free because they couldn't afford to pay! They got greedy, became abusive, and demanded that I provide all sorts of service that wasn't agreed upon and the result was they got booted. Certain people are like this. They develop this sense of entitlement that the expectation for freebies.

People need to know this stuff and that there is zero tolerance for abusive behavior like this. It is a political form of behavior that comes out when someone comes along and puts them in their place for doing something wrong. So they act out of anger and bitterness towards everything and everyone involved - even the help.

I was also considering taking limitation study services off the list because certain people abuse it. From now on, I am doing limitation study and debt reduction services differently now in respect to financial requirements.

Solve Student Debt specializes in solutions for students and graduates in student loan default, and those at risk of defaulting.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum